Page 90 of Golden Queen (Idrigard #1)

Thirty-One

Interlude

Prince Refaedon reached his long arms across the bed, stretching.

He ran into resistance on his left side and opened his eyes to see the form of a woman, lying on her side facing away from him.

Her long shape flowed down gracefully where a slim waist rose up to the gentle roundness of hips and the curve of a very nice ass.

The sheet had fallen away from her as she slept, so he could see the entire smooth expanse of one cheek.

He turned over and reached for her, wrapping his fingers around her hip. He heard her sleepy groan and watched her wiggle in response to his touch.

She woke gradually, rolling onto her back so that his fingers trailed around her body.

High, round breasts came into view. Their substantial weight made them bounce a little before settling into place on her chest. Her nipples, a deep plum color, were already peaked with the dawn chill in the air.

She was beautiful—her rich, golden skin smooth and unblemished beneath the black curls that fell around her shoulders.

She reached her arms over her head, stretching, and looked at him from beneath long, black lashes. “Your Highness,” she said, blinking a few times before she sat up and reached for him. “Did you need something?” she purred.

“Turn over,” Refaedon growled as he coaxed her hips around. He had to be quick. His father would be expecting him on deck for their arrival in this cursed land, and he didn’t want to deal with the tantrum the man would throw if he was late.

The woman, Catia, rolled over, crawling up onto her hands and knees. She arched before tilting her head to let the dark fall of her hair spread out across her back. She looked at him with half closed eyes and gave a wicked little grin.

He reached forward to push her shoulders to the bed, angling her backside higher as he positioned himself behind her.

He was already hard—he’d woken up that way. Though, it had more to do with the shadow-blasted dream he’d had than the fact that Catia was in his bed.

He buried himself inside her already wet body in one fluid motion. He sank all the way to the hilt, something he couldn’t usually manage with the considerable length of himself. But Catia was accommodating. She took all of him easily. He felt her body press tight around him as she moaned eagerly.

Refaedon slid himself out, and then grasping her hips tightly, he shoved himself back inside, and again. Each time he slid back into her he struck harder, and each time he slid out, he came back faster until he was fucking her so hard he could hear the slap of their flesh together loud in his ears.

Catia loved every moment of it. She had a bit of a perverse reaction to the degradation of being pounded into the mattress. Her cries grew more intense the harder he drove into her.

“Oh, yes! Yes yes yes!” she cried. The voice, a little over-the-top in terms of theatrics, began to needle him.

Refaedon pumped into her even harder, the muscles in his arms and chest standing out with the effort. He hoped fucking her like this would shut her up, but Catia’s cries grew louder still.

“Yes, oh gods, yes!” she moaned.

He leaned forward to put his hand over her mouth, pulling her head back and exposing her long, bare throat. “Quiet,” he hissed in her ear, and then growled as the little bitch bit his finger so hard it broke the skin.

The anger spurred him on. He felt his cock harden in response to her teeth against his skin. So he hooked the finger inside her mouth and pressed her face down into the mattress.

Refaedon’s other hand made its way to that lovely throat. He unwillingly wrapped his fingers around it, pulling her head back again. He was careful not to squeeze too hard as he drove into the warm, wet center of her.

As he neared climax, he pulled her up, pressing his chest down the length of her body as he sank his sharp fangs into the soft skin of her throat.

He tasted the sweet tang of her blood as his climax rolled through him. He growled deep and low against the soft, vulnerable flesh of her throat as he spilled himself inside her with one last mighty thrust.

His magic pulsed and thrummed with Catia's blood now coursing through him. He could feel her—her essence—as though the fundamental parts of her were running through him.

The black fire met those pieces of her, greedily twisted up in them as though bathing in her life force itself, and then consumed them.

They were hungry things, those dark, twisted flames inside him. They were never satisfied.

Refaedon pulled himself out of Catia's warmth and ran his hands down her body, luxuriating in the feel of her soft skin. He gave her a firm slap on her rounded backside, and then slid from the bed.

Catia rolled over and stretched like a cat, looking up at him mischievously—like she was satisfied even though he knew she hadn’t climaxed.

It annoyed Refaedon to see her acting so sated when he knew she was anything but.

He didn’t have time to see to her needs today, though. He felt a pang of regret to leave her that way, even if the woman was still playing at being satisfied.

Satisfaction was something Catia had been far too unfamiliar with when she had first come to his bed. Selfish Ithcan bastards, he mused to himself.

It was a simple thing to make a woman come, but those pale-eyed islanders seemed woefully ignorant of the concept. Or woefully unwilling since she was only a whore.

Catia had come aboard his ship at a port in Ithc, along with several other women interested in servicing the crew in return for passage east to the mainland of Alterra.

They'd made the voyage a great deal less dull, even if some of them were old enough to be his mother.

Refaedon had had them all in turn over the weeks since they’d left Ithc—sometimes more than one at a time when he was particularly bored.

None were ever so eager as Catia, though. She moaned and screamed as though she was so far gone with lust she couldn’t contain herself.

It had been an act, of course. Refaedon could tell when a woman was truly enjoying herself in his bed.

So he’d spent the next few months making Catia, and each of the whores from Ithc, scream with real pleasure—in ways that most of them had never even considered.

It had become a game to him—one he thoroughly enjoyed. But none of the women screamed the way Catia did. And none of them had that pretty, round backside that bounced and jiggled as he pounded into her from behind.

Refaedon toyed with the idea of climbing over her on the bed now and using his tongue to make her come. He knew his fucking father would be waiting, though.

He would take her to Albiyn with him, he decided. He would make her come so many times over the next weeks or months, she would think of him every time she fucked some fat Windemerian lord.

As Refaedon stepped up onto the deck of his sleek, black warship, he thought about how much he missed the women of the Shadowlands.

Beautiful, lusty, and skilled, the magi of Penjan knew their way around a man's cock.

And as Guardian of the Black Fire, he'd certainly never lacked eager company in his bed.

He had a pang of regret to imagine how long it might be until he could set foot on the onyx sand of the Black Coast again.

They had been at sea for half a year, creeping across the ocean with the fleet in tow behind them. It was amazing how much could go wrong with an army of this size—how often they had to drop anchor to solve some crisis or other with one of the three thousand dohtor frigates.

The journey, which would normally last no more than four months as they hopped from port to port across the Great Sea, had taken them more than six. Refaedon had never wanted anything so much as he wanted to put his feet on solid land and not feel the roll of the sea beneath them.

They had finally arrived at their destination, though. Only a little behind his father and the bulk of the army.

Refaedon and his sister had been in the northern Thyella for a week trying to extricate one of Admiral Nadjin’s ships from the arms of a kraken. They had eventually left the whole damned boat to the beast, picking up a few of the crew that managed to swim out of reach of the thing’s arms.

It was just another reason why Refaedon wanted his feet on dry land again.

He looked across the water to Preahjiin’s ship.

There were not many distinguishing features between the great black vessels, but the ship the princess captained as Supreme Commander of the Penjani Armada, had a long red pennant on the topmast that billowed out behind it in the wind like a stream of fresh flowing blood.

Refaedon didn't see his sister on the deck of her ship, and she was impossible to miss, even among the burly elves of her crew.

Preahjiin was a beast of a woman. She had an angular, severe face and square jaw that resembled his a great deal, and her shoulders and arms were even thicker than his own.

It gave her a more masculine appearance than most of the soft, feminine Penjani women.

But Preahjiin did not bemoan her sharp features or her muscular build. They suited her personality particularly well. She was powerful and feared, and she ruled over a harem that worshiped her as though she was a god come to earth for them to serve.

Refaedon had lost count of how many husbands and wives his sister truly had, but they were all present on board her ship, the Lithia.

It was named for one of her favorites, of course; the beautiful and intractable Lithia Silvegeo.

She was the daughter of the Count of Silvegeo, some little hamlet in the backwaters of Arkyl.

When Preahjiin spied her in the middle of a gagger’s bazaar, she’d followed the girl all the way back to her father’s estate, razed the entire fortress, and collected her beautiful prize.